From college fairs to contests, the Texas Thespian Festival is an anticipated event for theater troupes around the state to attend. This year, our school’s Troupe 7050 has traveled four hours for the opportunities that awaited them in Grapevine, Texas.

Leah Deleon is in her third year of attending, and she is changing course from her regular entries. Usually, she enters with a group performance, but this year she has entered her short film. The Audio-Video Production classes and theater troupe share a large amount of the same members, including Deleon. For a different competition called “Horrorfest”, she worked with other students to create a short film. Short film entry is a relatively new option for thespian contest entries, so she decided to submit her project.

“I’m not going to be performing anything, but that’s ok because I’m glad people get to see my film,” Deleon said, “It’s a great opportunity. It’s super fun and you learn so much at workshops, also watching people perform the pieces they prepared is so fun.”

In addition to contests, the festival includes workshops, with many classes offered and professionals from around the country to guide competitors. Students can choose from a range of workshop options that use necessary theater skills, between technical skills and performing skills.

“They have professionals not just from Texas, it’s all over the place. I met someone last year from New York and Chicago and they teach you a whole bunch of exercises. The workshops I’ve gone to were like yoga, to help relax the mind, get into character,” Deleon said. “And the other workshops I took were about directing because I wanted to get into that, especially for film.”

Isabelle Clarke, another junior theater student, is also attending for her third year. She is continuing her musical entries with a duet musical entry following her group musical’s success from last year. Her group advanced to nationals and achieved a superior rating in their category.

“We go and we compete, and then we have workshops: dance workshops, singing workshops, there’s a tap workshop that I did one time. It was a lot of fun,” Clarke said. “I did a belting workshop one time, that was really cool. And then I did this audition workshop, where you went and auditioned in front of the workshop guy and he critiqued it, but I spent most of my time competing last year.”

Clarke usually also competes in Tech Challenge, a group contest that is designed to test a small group on the main technical skills used backstage. The subjects tested are lighting, sewing, securing lights and curtains, and an extra tech-related mystery event.

“Tech Challenge is more low-key than an IE [individual event], it’s a team relay event. Each school gets one team that can compete,” Clarke said. “There’s so many different things you can do at Thespians, there’s something for everybody.”

Junior thespian Jayla Vongsy has competed virtually for her third year in a row, entering her costume designs from the school musicals.

“This year, I am costume designing the show “Addams Family the Musical”. Essentially, what I do is submit five fully rendered drawings with fabric samples of costumes that I designed. I have to create original pieces and sketch them based on the show and the script,” Vongsy said.

In her last two years competing, she advanced to nationals with costume designs in Mary Poppins the Musical and SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical. After three years of competitions, Vongsy understands the significance of time-management skills in a big project like this.

“These designs take an absurd amount of time to craft in the finest details to show the judges what is happening in my mind. I need to showcase my ideas in a way that everyone else can recognize. If I finish last minute, my designs will be incomplete and the true intention of my ideas will be lost,” Vongsy said.

These competitions offer more than wisdom for students as scholarship opportunities and college auditions are readily available as well. Last year’s class of 2024 students Megan Janger and Emily Hacking were awarded the Grace Kelly Scholarship, contributing $6,000 towards their college tuition.

“They also won first place in nationals, which is very, very impressive. They’re wonderfully talented,” Clarke said.